HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

What Is Development?

1. Development is a pattern of movement or change that begins at

conception and continues throughout the life span.

Development calls for the following process to take place

2. Physical processes involve changes in an individual’s

biological nature (maturation).
3. Cognitive processes involve changes in an individual’s thought,
intelligence, and language.
4. Socioemotional processes involve changes in an individual’s
relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in
personality.

5. The three processes are intricately interwoven and interdependent.

6. The “early experience” doctrine proposes that after early
development, we become relatively fixed and permanent in our
makeup.
7. The “later experience” advocates propose that children are
malleable, and care-giving is important across the lifespan.

How Do Nature versus Nurture Influence Development?

1. Separating the effect of genes from the effect of environment is

virtually impossible.

a. Genotype is the individual’s genetic heritage. This decribes the

nature of a person
b. Phenotype is the way the genotype is expressed in measurable
characteristics. And this reflects Nurture and nature to some
extent
c. Some characteristics, especially social behaviors, cannot be
predicted from genes alone.

2. Nature Versus Nurture

a. Some developmentalists argue for the power of heredity in development.

1. We all reach the same developmental milestones at

approximately the same time (walking, talking, puberty,
decline).
b. Some developmentalists argue in favor of environment in development.

1. Environment can influence and alter some biological processes.

2. Environment influences social development.

Prenatal Development
 1. The Course of Prenatal Development
a. Conception occurs when a single sperm from the male penetrates the female’s egg.
b. The germinal period is the time from conception until the zygote attaches to the uterine wall.
c. The embryonic period is the time period from 3 to 8 weeks after conception.

1. By the eighth week, the spinal cord, eyes, heart, arms, legs,
and intestinal tract appear.
2. The embryo weighs about 1/30th of an ounce and is just over
1 inch long.
d. The fetal period begins two months after conception and lasts, on average, 7 months.

1. At 4 months, the fetus weighs 4-7 ounces and is 6 inches

long.
2. At 6 months, eyes and eyelids are completely formed and
irregular breathing begins.
2. Threats to the Fetus
a. From conception to birth, the fetus is susceptible to the mother’s environment.
b. A teratogen is any nongenetic agent that causes a birth defect, including:

1. heroin, cocaine
2. alcohol
3. thalidomide
4. HIV
c. Preterm infants are at higher risk for developmental problems
and learning disabilities.
d. New techniques show promise in helping premature babies
develop healthily.
B. Physical Development in Childhood (pp. 125–127)
1. The infant enters the world equipped with a variety of reflexes.
2. Many reflexes weaken or disappear around six months of age,
including grasping, sucking, stepping, and startle reflexes.
3. Physical development in the first two years is dramatic: by 12
months, infants can sit, stand, climb, and walk.
4. Interconnections between neurons dramatically increase as
dendrites branch out.
5. Early Childhood
a. Growth rate begins to slow in early childhood.
b. Children develop an increasing sense of control over large and fine motor skills.
c. The brain attains 75% of its adult weight by age 3; 90% by age 5.
d. Increased myelination and synaptic connections continue through age five and even into
adolescence.

6. Middle and Late Childhood

a. Motor development results in smoother, more coordinated actions.
b. Physical activities are essential for refining large and fine motor skills.

Cognitive Development in Childhood (pp. 128–134)

1. Piaget’s Theory
a. Piaget believed that children actively construct their world through the use of schemas.
b. People use schemas in two ways:

1. Assimilation occurs when individuals incorporate new

information into existing schemas.
 2. Accommodation occurs when individuals adjust their
schemas to new information.
2. Piaget’s Stages
a. Sensorimotor Stage (ages 0–2)

1. Infants coordinate sensory experiences with motor actions.

2. The infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action to
symbolic thought.
3. Object permanence is the knowledge that objects and events
continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or
touched. It usually develops by 8 months of age.
b. Preoperational Stage (ages 2–7)

1. The child begins to represent the world with words and

images.
2. Symbolic thought is increasing but still hampered by
egocentrism and lack of logical thought as evidenced by the
inability to solve conservation tasks or understand
reversibility.
c. Concrete Operational Stage (ages 7–11)

1. Children replace intuitive responses with operations and

logical thinking in concrete situations.
2. Classification skills increase and become more complex, but
abstract thinking has not yet developed.
3. Children are able to focus on more than one aspect of a
problem to draw conclusions.
d. Formal Operations (adolescence and early adulthood)

1. Thinking becomes more idealistic, abstract, and logical.

2. Adolescents begin to use hypothetical-deductive reasoning,
the ability to develop hypotheses and systematically solve
problems.
3. Evaluating Piaget
a. Some cognitive abilities emerge earlier than Piaget thought.
b. Formal operations does not emerge as consistently in adolescence as Piaget envisioned.
c. Piaget placed too much emphasis on broad changes and ignored the small steps.
d. Piaget did not acknowledge the roles of culture and education in development.
e. Vygotsky argues that culture determines the skills that are acquired.

Socioemotional Development in Childhood (pp. 134–148)

1. As children grow and develop they are socialized by and socialize
others—parents, peers, and others.
2. Erikson’s Theory of Socioemotional Development
a. Trust versus mistrust (0–1 years)
b. Autonomy versus shame and doubt (1–3 years)
c. Initiative versus guilt (3–5 years)
d. Industry versus inferiority (6 years until puberty)

3. Evaluating Erikson’s Theory

a. Erikson was the first to recognize that development is a life-long process.
b. Erikson’s “single concept” may leave out other important developmental concepts.

4. Attachment in Infancy
 a. Attachment is the close emotional bond between the infant and
caregiver.
b. Harlow and Zimmerman empirically demonstrated that contact
comfort, not feeding, is the crucial element in the attachment
process.
c. Konrad Lorenz used (or perhaps “hatched”) the term imprinting to
refer to the finding that an infant animal becomes attached to the
first moving object it sees or hears.
d. John Bowlby believed that humans have an instinctive drive
toward attachment, but psychologists agree that it is more flexible
(a “sensitive” period) than in other animals.
e. Mary Ainsworth and attachment theory
1. Secure attachment: The infant uses the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore. Their
mothers/caregivers are responsive, accepting, and affectionate.
2. Insecure attachment: The infant fears strangers and is easily upset by everyday sensations.
3. Attachment patterns early in life predict for competence or lack of competence in life.
f. Jerome Kagan argues that children are resilient and adaptive and are influenced by genetics and temperament as
much as by caregiver styles.

Temperament
a. Temperament refers to an individual’s behavioral style and
characteristic way of responding.
b. Thomas and Chess believe there are three basic temperament
types: easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm.
c. Other researchers argue that the temperament types are
emotionality, sociability, and activity level.
6. Parenting
a. Parenting Styles
1. Authoritarian: parents are restrictive and punishing.
2. Authoritative: parents encourage independence but set clear limits.
3. Neglectful: parents ignore or are uninvolved in the child’s life.
4. Indulgent: parents place few demands on the child.

b. Parenting is a bidirectional process: reciprocal socialization is the

term used to describe the socialization of parents by children just
as parents socialize children.
c. Mother and father cooperation and mutual respect help children
develop positive attitudes toward both male and female roles.
1. Divorce. Children are vulnerable to stress, particularly after
multiple divorces. The majority of children from divorced
families show good adjustment, but 20–25% show adjustment
problems, as compared to 10% from non-divorced families.
2. Positive Parenting. Spending time with children, emotion
coaching, and teaching morality are helpful strategies for
raising children.
3. Cultural awareness and counteracting poverty and
discrimination are gaining importance in the work of
developmental psychologists.
7. Moral Development
a. Kohlberg’s Theory
 1. A key concept in Kohlberg’s theory is internalization: the developmental change from behavior that is
externally controlled to behavior that is controlled by internal, self-generated standards, and principles.
2. The Preconventional Stage: Moral thinking is based on punishments and rewards.
3. The Conventional Stage: Moral thinking is based on parental standards or societal laws.
4. The Postconventional Stage: Moral development is based on self-governing standards.

b. Evaluating Kohlberg’s Theory

1. Kohlberg’s theory operates from a justice perspective.

2. Carol Gilligan argues that some people (especially women)

operate from a care perspective.
8. Gender Development
a. Gender refers to the social and psychological aspects of being
male or female.
b. Around puberty, girls often experience a conflict between
personal growth and gender roles, and may play a part in the
development of depression and eating disorders.
c. Androgens control male development both prenatally and at
puberty.
d. Both biology and experience play a role in gender development.
e. Evolutionary psychology emphasizes the genetic basis of social
behaviors.
f. Gender roles are expectations for how females and males should
think, act, and feel.
g. Family and peers help mold gender-typed behavior.
h. Gender-schema theory proposes that children develop a gender
schema for “appropriate” behavior, which is then used as a
cognitive framework for interpreting experiences.
E. Critical Controversy: Parents Bring Up Their Children, Don’t
They? (p. 141)
1. Judith Harris presents the controversial idea that genes and social
environment play a much larger role in child development than do
parents.
2. Harris suggests that children learn social skills from a variety of
sources.
3. Critics point to studies of adult maladjustment and psychopathology
in children who were abused by their parents.
F. Positive Psychology and Children’s Development (pp. 148–149)
1. Children who are resilient have advantages, such as individual
factors, family factors, and extrafamilial factors that help them
overcome disadvantages.
2. Programs that help parents in addition to children play a role in the
well-being of poor children.

Positive Psychology and Adolescents (pp. 150–151)

1. Freud described adolescents as sexually driven and conflicted.
2. Too often adolescents have been stereotyped as abnormal and
deviant.
a. Acting out and boundary testing are normal events in adolescent development.
b. Adolescents enthusiastically try on new identities.
 3. Adolescence is a time of evaluation, decision-making, and
commitment.
4. Worldwide, about 3 of 4 adolescents have a healthy self-image.
B.Physical Development in Adolescence (pp. 151–152)
1. Puberty is a period of rapid skeletal and sexual maturation.
a. Increases in concentrations of testosterone lead to the development of genitals, increased height, beard growth, pubic hair
growth, and voice changes for males.
b. Increases in estradiol lead to the development of breasts, uterus, skeletal development, and late in puberty,
menstruation for females.
C. Cognitive Development in Adolescence (pp. 152–153)
1. Adolescents enter into the stage of formal operations and thinking
is characterized by abstraction, idealism, and hypothetical-
deductive reasoning.
2. Adolescent egocentrism involves the belief that others are
preoccupied with the adolescent, that the adolescent is unique, and
that the adolescent is indestructible.
D.Socioemotional Development in Adolescence (pp. 153–155)
1. According to Erikson, adolescents experiment with different roles in
an effort to determine who they are.
a. Identity confusion can result in withdrawal and isolation or
immersion in the crowd.
b. A moratorium is a temporal and psychological gap between
childhood and adulthood.
2. James Marcia proposes that four identity statuses (identity
diffusion, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, identity
achievement) are based on the dimensions of exploration and
commitment.
3. Ethnic Identity
a. Adolescents become aware that the majority culture evaluates
their ethnic group.
b. Different ethnic groups place different challenges on teens.
4. At-Risk Youth
a. Four areas that put youth at risk are delinquency, substance
abuse, unprotected sex and pregnancy, and school-related
problems.
b. Intervention requires individual attention and community-wide
interventions.
E. Psychology and Life: Developing a positive identity (p. 155)
1. Identity is complex and takes a long time to develop.
2. The college years are an important time for identity development.
3. Whether or not to adopt the parents’ identities is a challenge.
4. Identities continue to change.

Physical Development in Adulthood (pp. 156–161)

1. Physical Changes in Early Adulthood
a. We reach peak performance and are healthiest in early adulthood.

2. Physical Changes in Middle Adulthood

a. In middle adulthood, persons generally become concerned with health and health habits.
b. Menopause
 1. The average age for menopause is 52.
2. Estrogen replacement therapy is recommended for women who
need symptom management and for women at risk for
osteoporosis or coronary disease.
3. Physical Changes in Late Adulthood
a. Human beings have a potential life span of 120 years, but the average life expectancy is 73 for men and 80 for women.

b. Biological theories of aging

1. The cellular-clock theory is Hayflick’s view that cells can divide
only about 100 times.
2. The shortening of telomeres with each cell division may be the
biological clock.
3. Free-radical theory states the people age because unstable
oxygen molecules (free radicals) accumulate and damage DNA
and other cell structures.
c. Physical Changes and Health
1. In later adulthood, arthritis, hypertension, osteoporosis, and
weight loss may become evident.
2. Exercise can help maintain strength and fight osteoporosis.
3. Seniors who have more control over their lives are more likely
to be alert, active, and happy.
The Brain and Alzheimer’s Disease
a. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, irreversible dementia.
1. Studies have shown that acetylcholine concentrations in the brain gradually decrease.
2. The Mankato nuns research gives support to the idea that if we “use it,” we are less likely to “lose it.”

Cognitive Development in Adulthood (pp. 161–164)

1. Cognition in Early Adulthood
a. Piaget felt no changes occur in thinking during adulthood.
b. Other psychologists argue that adults use less idealism.

2. Cognition in Middle Adulthood

a. Crystallized intelligence (accumulated knowledge) increases in middle adulthood, and fluid intelligence
(abstract reasoning) begins to decline.

b. Long-term memory is more likely to decline if health declines or if

adults do not use effective organization or imagery. (pp. 160–161)
c. Life events, rather than stages, may determine the changes we
experience as adults.
d. Cohorts, or groups of individuals born in the same year or time
period, experience different social expectations than other
cohorts.
e. Social clocks, the expectations of a culture about which tasks
should be accomplished when, can act as guides in adult
development.
3. Cognition in Late Adulthood
a. Older adults experience a decline in speed of processing and some plasticity.
b. Wisdom is expert knowledge about the practical aspects of life: This area may improve with age.
c. With education and training, older adults experience shows little decline.

C.Socioemotional Development in Adulthood (pp. 164–169)

1. Erikson’s Adult Stages
 a. In early adulthood, we reach Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation
stage: We focus on developing loving, stable relationships.
b. In middle adulthood (generativity versus stagnation stage), we
become concerned about our contributions to society and future
generations.
c. In later adulthood, we look back on our lives with either integrity
or despair.
2. Most careers are established by middle age, occupy large
amounts of available time, and compete with family needs.
3. Work provides fulfillment, structure, and a rhythm to life.
4. Marriage and family sometimes conflict with personal fulfillment, and
attitudes toward marriage may be unrealistically high.
5. Principles of a successful marriage include fondness and admiration,
partners as friends, sharing of power, and solving conflicts together.
6. Levinson suggests that the change to middle adulthood requires the
individual to come to terms with four main conflicts.
7. Santrock argues that not all adults experience midlife crisis and
instead suggests that adults experience midlife consciousness.